Because of course, this was a magical school. Everyone here could levitate their belongings except me, the girl who’d only found out she had magic a month ago and still didn’t know how to use it. I was the high school dropout suddenly attendingHarvard, and it was starting to become obvious I had my work cut out for me.
But I would catch up, I told myself as I dragged my suitcase down the hall to Room 217. There was music pounding behind the door—something heavy and angry that made the wood vibrate under my knuckles as I knocked.
The music cut off abruptly and the door swung open. A blonde girl with black lipstick, blacker nails, and a T-shirt that said “Grave Rot” in dripping slashing letters looked me up and down like I was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
“No,” she said, and tried to shut the door in my face.
I stuck my foot in the gap, swallowing my wince of pain. “I’m Everly, your new roommate.”
“I can see that.” Her pale blue eyes traveled across me with visible disgust. “Did a children’s birthday party throw up on you?”
“I brought cookies.” I held up the Tupperware, certain something had to work on the population of snooty goths I found myself surrounded by. “Made them from scratch this morning.”
“I don’t like chocolate,” she said, though her hand dropped from the doorknob. She crossed her arms instead, but I still counted it as a win.
“These are snickerdoodles—no chocolate inside.” I dare to brush past her into the room, and she stepped aside, if for no other reason than to avoid getting shoulder-bumped. “I grind the cinnamon myself.”
The girl gave me an odd look. “Who grinds cinnamon themselves when you can just buy it from the store?”
“I do. Like I said, I’m Everly. You are?”
“Brittany.” She snatched the Tupperware from my hands. “Spelled like the Spaniel, not the Spears.”
“Got it.”
I surveyed the room, which was bare on one side—my side, of course—and very lived in on the other. Her half looked like a Hot Topic had mated with a Victorian funeral parlor and given birth to a baby who didn’t want to exist. Blackout curtains blocked the window, purple fairy lights cast everyone in a dim glow, and the white walls had been plastered nearly floor-to-ceiling with emo and metal band posters.
My half was untouched, save for the window blinds, which were drawn closed. I had the feeling I’d need to introduce Brittany to the concept of natural light slowly and with caution, like giving a baby peanut butter for the first time. I didn’t mind, though—the desk lamp I’d brought would do more than enough to help illuminate my homework, and I didn’t plan on spending much time in my dorm room anyway. Like my mom always said, going away to college is meant to be an experience, and you can’t experience much of anything locked away in your room.
“Ground rules,” Brittany said through a mouthful of cookie. “Don’t touch my stuff. Don’t talk to me before noon. Don’t bring anyone back here—I don’t care about your love life as long as I don’t have to witness it, or god forbid, hear it. And don’t—” she jabbed a black-nailed finger at me, “—expect me to be your friend. You seem like that type, so I’m making it clear at the start that it ain’t gonna happen.”
“Noted.” I was already unpacking, making my bed, hanging up my clothes, and doing my best to make the space mine even though every instinct told me this wasn’t going to be a pleasant roommate experience. “By the way, what’s Sanguis?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Your textbooks.” I nodded at the stack on her desk, stamped with a crest of a black rose dripping blood. “That’s Latin for blood, right?”
“You don’t know the magical disciplines, but you know Latin?”
“My family does trivia nights, and it helpful for the Romance languages. What does that mean—magical disciplines? Does the rose have something to do with it?”
Brittany’s expression suggested I might be an imbecile. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“That’s why I’m asking.”
She let out a long breath, as if answering my questions cost her something physically. “There are four fraternities here, each of them focusing on one of the four disciplines of magic. Sanguis is blood magic—that’s me. Mors is death magic, those are the creepy rich kids in silver and white. Tempest is storm magic, the athletic assholes in midnight blue. Tumult is chaos magic, the weird ones in purple.” She shoved another cookie in her mouth and spoke around it, spraying crumbs. “Everyone picks a discipline by the end of freshman year. Or gets picked by one of the fraternities or their sororities. Or washes out.”
“What happens if your magic doesn’t fit any of the four?”
She snorted. “You would ask that. I guess it’s possible, but if it happens you’re fucked.”
I thought about my magic, which seemed to do whatever it felt like with no real shape. Maybe that made it chaos magic. What had she called it—Tumult? I liked purple, at least.
“Great,” I said, smiling at her. “Can’t wait to learn more.”
Brittany shook her head, but I caught the corner of her mouth twitching, like there was a smile buried deep inside her somewhere she’d forgotten about. “I didn’t even know someonecould transfer here in the middle of the year without knowing what magic is. You’re either very brave or very stupid for coming here.”
“I guess you’d say I’m stupid, but,” I shrugged a shoulder, “I guess I’m just… curious. I want to know what this thing is inside me that no one ever knew was there, and this is the only place that’s offered to teach me about it.”
